The administrative tribunal said the man's case was justified and has annulled decisions made in July and August 2017, because the authority that made the decisions has been deemed incompetent. The case will now return to the mayor and the municipality.
In April 2014, the man filed a request with the mayor to build an open canopy on his land. The mayor acknowledged the demand in July 2014 and listed a number of conditions to be applied. In July 2017 the man asked permission to build an aluminium veranda, which was swiftly denied by the municipal council, citing insufficient distance between the boundaries of the land. Both parties met again in August 2017, but the council informed the man three weeks later that the decision was unchanged. The man then requested permission to build a pergola in September 2017, which was granted in October. In November 2017 the man filed a complaint against the municipality to reverse the decisions regarding the veranda.
Over the duration of the procedure, the tribunal called into question the competency of the respective authorities when making the decisions. The judgement ruled that the mayor should be responsible for granting planning permission, according to the law of 2004 regarding territory development. With this in mind, the mayor should been the authority to sign off on any building projects to ensure they conformed to regulations. Although in this instance the decisions had been signed off by the mayor, they had not been made in his name, but in that of the municipal council.
As the decisions were therefore deemed to have been made by an incompetent authority, they were reversed according to the tribunal's ruling. Neither the claimant nor the municipality were liable for the 3000€ procedural indemnity.
